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Title: Access, Outcomes, and Social Mobility in a Stratified System of Postsecondary Education
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Thompson, Jason |
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Access, Outcomes, and Social Mobility in a Stratified System of Postsecondary Education Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, New York University, 2017 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): College Characteristics; College Graduates; Educational Returns; Mobility, Social; Modeling, Instrumental Variables Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The first chapter revisits the role of a college degree as "the great equalizer." In doing so, I deploy data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) to estimate the intergenerational associations in socioeconomic status (SES) among graduates from non-selective, less selective, and selective four-year colleges. Intergenerational social mobility varies by measure of SES and tier of degree selectivity. With one exception, parent-child associations in SES are not statistically significant among graduates from colleges in the middle tier of institutional selectivity. In contrast, the associations between parental income and child's hourly wages, family income, and family net worth are statistically significant among graduates of selective institutions and there is mixed evidence of these associations among graduates of the least-selective four-year schools. In the final empirical chapter, I take an instrumental variables approach in estimating the causal returns to attending a selective institution. These estimates build upon prior findings in a few key manners. First, the breadth of data available in the NLSY79 permits the analysis of total family income and total family wealth, in addition to hourly wages or annual earnings. Also, the most recent waves of the NLSY79 report data on respondents through the age of 45, spanning an age range in which the measurement of SES is least susceptible to error. Findings from this chapter show that, in comparison to attending a less selective college, accessing a selective four-year institution leads to a greater likelihood of completing a bachelor's degree and attaining an advanced degree, higher hourly wages, and greater total family income and family net worth. |
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Bibliography Citation
Thompson, Jason. Access, Outcomes, and Social Mobility in a Stratified System of Postsecondary Education. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, New York University, 2017. |